She wore a pink and black top, black slacks and flip-flops as she stood before the judge. She pleaded guilty to attempted larceny — she’d stolen jewelry from a home where she was babysitting. (The larceny charge itself the court dropped in exchange for her plea.) She wiped tears from her face as the judge spoke to her, admonished her and set a sentencing date for August. She then said good-bye to her attorney and left the courtroom, a look of deep embarrassment on her face.
This was one of a dozen defendants in Judge Margaret Noe’s courtroom Wednesday morning. Sitting in the gallery, we watched brief acts of ongoing dramas in the lives of real men and women. Theft, assault, drugs, home invasion — each crime carrying its own penalty.
As things proceeded I thought, of all things, about substutionary atonement. Christ takes the penalty we guilty sinners deserve, securing our innocence. John Calvin, whose 500th birthday we observe tomorrow, summarizes this classical understanding of atonement:
This is our acquittal: the guilt that held us liable for punishment has been transferred to the head of the Son of God. We must, above all, remember this substitution, lest we tremble and remain anxious throughout life — as if God’s righteous vengeance, which the Son of God has taken upon himself, still hung over us. (Institutes 2.16.5)
These are hard words. It’s easy to understand why this doctrine has fallen into disfavor and disrepair. It makes God, whom Jesus likened to a heartsick Father, look punitive and vengeful.
Yet I wonder if our theology has withered for casting this doctrine aside. God is so loving and compassionate now our actions no longer carry consequences. If all that matters is God loves me no matter what I do, then what I do no longer matters. But the courtroom tells me actions do bring consequences. If I break a human law, I will suffer a penalty. Does breaking God’s law bring none?
If I stood before a judge, as the woman did yesterday, caught in the machinery of justice, and a painful penalty stared me in the face, I’d be stunned and grateful for anyone who made it all go away — even if I didn’t understand exactly how that happened or who absorbed the cost.
On a TV crime drama a young woman was driving her father home when she killed a boy riding a bike. After the accident, her father compelled her to change seats with him so it would appear he had been driving. He went to prison in her place out of love for his daughter. This is substitutionary atonement. It’s not morally plausible — it’s an act of desperate love.
I don’t know if this is what Jesus meant when he described his death as ‘a ransom for many.’ I also realize atonement has many meanings. But all this helps me understand the atonement in a new way, although the idea itself is as old as religion. Christ switches places with me, absorbs the consequences of my crimes and drains them of any further danger to me.
‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.’ I suspect this is an inescapable part of the gospel.
I think your concerns here are right.
I think that substitutionary atonement has fallen out of favor among pastors and national leaders of the liberal denominations because they associate it with their arch enemies (evangelicals and other theological and political conservatives, whom they call fundamentalists) and because they have learned to use a demythologized Christus Victor theory and the moral examplar theory to support their left-wing political ideology. Substitutionary atonement also seems to be falling out of favor among many evangelicals now. I am too far removed from evangelicalism to fully understand what is happening, but it appears to have political connections just as it has had in liberal protestantism.
At the same time, I continue to admire the work of liberal theologians, such as John Macquarrie and Paul Tillich, who have described the atonement in ways that do not do politicize it in this sense. They have not discarded any of the theories of atonement. They have used them all in a kind of synthesis that preserves objective and subjective aspects of atonement. I think their analyses enrich our understanding of the atonement and of our estrangement.
As you know, I grew up with liberal theology and I continue to admire it. But I think most of us who grew up with liberal theology no longer go to church. It seems that the pastors and members in liberal churches now are mostly people who grew up evangelical and later migrated to liberal denominations.
I tried to read Paul Tillich last year and made good progress for a while, but then I got bogged down in him. I nearly made it through Vol 1 of ST but just ran out of gas toward the end. I should try again. What book of Macquarrie would you recommend for the novice?
I guess the point of this post is that substitutionary atonement looks a lot different if you’re sitting in a courtroom than when you’re sitting in a classroom. Context changes perception of these matters.
Yes, I think you are right about the effect of the courtroom experience on one’s perspective of the atonement.
Macquarrie’s systematic theology is titled, “Principles of Christian Theology.”
“It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.” Rom. 2:13
The law mentioned is the law which God has added after Jesus’ crucifixion. “The law was added so that the trespass might increase.” Rom. 5:20 And also see Heb. 7:12 “also a change of the law.”
Therefore the correct understanding of the gift of righteousness of God is as follows.
“And for Your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man too I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.” Gen. 9:5 NIV
For the Lord’s command given through the apostles can only be obeyed by the faith of confessing directly to God that you are sorry Jesus’ life was taken by bloodshed and be baptized into this Way of faith, the righteousness of God, to be forgiven of all sins. But the change of the law makes it an additional sin for which there is no forgiveness possible if you refuse to confess to God that you are truly sorry Jesus’ life was taken by bloodshed.
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